The Match: Tiger vs. Phil

Jack Whigham, a Hollywood agent, and Bryan Zuriff, a film and TV producer, conceived the event. Zuriff was a fan of The Skins Game—a former PGA Tour unofficial event that was held around Thanksgiving weekend—and envisioned a concept for a golf event that would, as explained by Whigham, be "played the way a lot of us play with our buddies on the weekends? You know, where you bet on everything and talk smack and basically have this continually running dialogue of, pardon the expression, giving each other shit." The event would be jointly owned by Mickelson and Woods, but the entity still had to pay a rights fee to the PGA Tour—which would impose some restrictions and conditions on the presentation and format of the event. ==Format==

The two golfers played 18 holes of match play. Following the 18th hole, the golfers halved in a playoff resulting in a 93 yard 20th hole being played. The two golfers halved for two holes before Mickelson won it on the 22nd hole. A prominently promoted feature of the event were side-bets, which counted separately from the main purse. Both golfers would be able to make wagers on per-hole challenges, with examples such as closest to the pin and longest drive. ==Result==

Mickelson and Woods played 18 holes of match play, but they were tied after regulation play. Play then continued into extra holes, and Mickelson won. Side bets The following side bets were made during the event, with winnings going to charity: ==Broadcast==

Owing to the PGA Tour's involvement in the event, its current media partners had the right of first refusal to acquire the media rights to The Match. NBC and CBS declined, while a deal was nearly made with ESPN for the event to take place on Independence Day, but fell through at the last minute. The rights were ultimately acquired by AT&T, which had recently acquired Turner Sports' parent company Time Warner (now WarnerMedia). The event would be sold as a pay-per-view, and AT&T said that it would leverage all of its media properties and platforms, including linear television pay-per-view (such as AT&T U-verse and DirecTV, with the latter offering a 4K UHD feed with HDR for an additional fee; the event was also offered in traditional form by cable's In Demand and Dish's pay-per-view services), Bleacher Report, and WarnerMedia entertainment properties such as HBO (who broadcast 24/7: The Match on November 13, 2018) and TNT (which would air highlights). Turner announced plans to use the PGA Tour's analytics system ShotLink to provide real-time statistics throughout the broadcast, and integrate it with MGM's sports betting data to provide information on odds. Ernie Johnson Jr. served as play-by-play commentator, with Peter Jacobsen and Darren Clarke on color. NBA on TNT host Charles Barkley, as well as Samuel L. Jackson, were also involved in the broadcast. After facing technical difficulties with B/R Live's payment system that prevented some customers from accessing the purchased PPV, B/R Live quietly dropped the pay-per-view and elected to stream The Match for free. Turner, as well as other providers, issued refunds. Turner stated that the freely available live stream attracted 750,000 unique views; Turner Broadcasting president David Levy stated that the event "surpassed expectations across all of our platforms", and blamed the server issues on "really insufficient memory, server capacity that was required, and the high volume of consumer access requests in a condensed amount of time", especially on Black Friday. ==References==